The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [4]
It was learned that Fanshaw himself had not built his house. He had helped to build a number of others, but he had not built this one. He explained. Among his people, the most desirable and eligible young gentlemen are actively sought out by the maidens for the purpose of—he could not remember the English word for it, but it is the state of being man and squaw. The maiden expresses her wish for the young gentleman of her choice by giving him a piece of bread made of maize. Of course the young gentleman has the right to reject her proposal by returning the maize-bread to her. But if he wants her, he keeps the bread. Together they plan a public festival at which they will announce their wish to enter the state of man and squaw. The whole village, then, as a token of joy, build the dwellingplace for the couple in one afternoon. That is the entire ceremony.
“It is simple,” Fanshaw observed. “No words need be spoken, other than many exclamations of joy by the people as they build the domicile. A lodge-raising is a most noisy festival, but it is not in words. Much meat is eaten. The blessed couple afterward are too full of meat to do the—I did not ever learn what you call it in English—the, when in darkness, one-on-top-together-fastened-between. Do you know it? No? Pity. It is with much joy.” There was a legend among his people that this frolic was responsible for the girl’s production of an infant after nine moons. But Fanshaw’s lady had never produced an infant, although, with little else to do but tend their garden patch and hunt an occasional wild turkey, they spent most of their time in one-on-top-together-fastened-between.
It could be a superstition, of which there were many, and while Fanshaw was of the opinion that the efficacy of superstitions was in direct proportion to one’s belief in their efficacy, there was no denying that many superstitions were useful and never failed. In the course of time he imparted several of these to Jacob Ingledew. The root of the buckeye tree, crushed and dropped into a pool of the creek, is a quick way to catch fish, by poisoning them. In time of famine, when other meat is scarce, do not disdain the ordinary mud turtle; his flesh consists of seven tastes of meat: pork, beef, mutton, venison, chicken, duck and fish. Fanshaw taught him many natural herbal remedies for the thousand ills that flesh is heir to, although most of these happened to be identical with ones that Jacob Ingledew already knew, learned from his ancestors. They discovered also that they had in common their beliefs in the importance of doing certain things, such as planting, by the dark of the moon or the light of the moon.
One of their few disagreements, which provided much fuel for their debates, was over the existence of God, or Wahkontah, as Fanshaw called him (it translates as “Mysterious Spirit” rather than the more common “Great Spirit” of other tribes). Jacob Ingledew felt that there was no such thing as God, or, if there were, he was a senile loafer who had created the world during his energetic youth but was now too old to care for it or take care of it. This notion greatly incensed Fanshaw, and in the intensity of their debates they almost came to blows. But they never fought, physically; I have always been curious as to which of them would have won if they had; it would have been a very even match.
But Fanshaw was a man of prayer. The door of his house, that is, the door of his half of the house, faced the east, whence, his people believed, all good things came (a peculiarly harsh irony in view of the fact that the displacing white settlers came from that direction). Each morning, at dawn, he would rise and perform his matinals, facing east. Our illustration attempts to show his house as illuminated by the long light of this early moment; imagination must visualize Fanshaw standing outside his door facing east. The first morning Jacob Ingledew spent in Stay More, sleeping on the ground by his mule tethered half